Modern supermarkets and discount stores with large adjoining parking lots are very commonplace. Typically, most customers will leave the market or store with their bagged items in a shopping cart. These items will be transported in the cart to a parked automobile in the parking lot and there transferred to the automobile. Users of the cart often damage their own automobile, because the cart can not be properly stabilized while it is being unloaded. The cart will roll into scrape, and or dent an automobile. After which the shopping cart is to be placed in a cart corral, if such a corral is at hand or conveniently available. Generally the corral is to far away and the cart is left in the parking lot until it is retrieved and stored or placed service by store personnel.
A significant amount of property damage and occasional personal injury occurs as a result of the abandonment and the storage of shopping carts in or near parking lots. The cart can be bumped or blown into motion. This rolling is accelerated by the slope of the parking lot empowering the cart to cause considerable damage upon impact.
These types of problem are particularly acute in those parking lots which are steeply inclined either because of hilly topography or because of drainage requirements.
Others have recognized cart control problems associated with unrestrained shopping carts in parking lots and have attempted to remedy the situation. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,112,121 and 3,458,015 disclose carts which have been equipped with safety brakes. However, any shopping cart brake must be economical, easy to install, and even easier to operate.
The brake system must provide durable operation with minimal maintenance and not adversely effecting cart control activities. Above all it must return significantly more benefits in reduced claims and customer goodwill than potential liabilities before the retailer will incur the added expense a brake system is bound to entail. Additionally, any such brake system must not require the alteration of the current methods and equipment necessary to produce the cart or its casters. Manufactures are reluctant to alter their production methods or tools to accommodate braking systems.
All other shopping cart brake mechanisms suffer in one manner or another from these limitations. The result is that there are no cart brakes widely used in the United States. American retailers, cart manufactures, and their insurance companies are losing tens of millions of dollars annually in cart involved accidents which can be eliminated by a market acceptable shopping cart brake system.
There is an unmet market need for a shopping cart brake system which is economical to produce, easy to install, use, and durable enough to carry out its function.
This braking system can be factory installed after cart assembly or can be retrofitted to a retailer's existing fleet. This assembly has a minimum of parts for economy and efficient operation. The assembly is easy to install, easy to use and very reliable.